By Andrew Bacevich Dr. Bacevich is a professor emeritus at Boston University and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Dear President Biden:

Soon after winning election to the presidency, you announced that "America is back, ready to lead the world" and to resume its accustomed place "at the head of the table." Among those distressed that your predecessor showed so little interest in leading anything anywhere, such sentiments resonate.

In the political circles where you have spent virtually your entire adult life, belief that history summons the United States to lead the world is an article of faith. So too is the conviction that the world itself yearns for American leadership, with other nations eager for Washington to occupy a position of privilege. A return to pre-Trump normalcy implies a restoration of U.S. global preeminence.

I urge you to reconsider any such expectation. In the aftermath of World War II, with international politics centered on a bipolar competition between East and West, such a formulation possessed a certain utility. The euphoria unleashed by the end of the Cold War made the temptation to double down on such claims all but irresistible.

But the era of American primacy has ended. We may date its demise from the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which as a U.S. senator you supported. In the roughly two decades since, as the U.S. was squandering trillions of dollars in failed military campaigns, the global order has undergone a transformation. The emergence of new threats in the form of climate change and pandemics offers one example. The shifting distribution of power in East Asia offers a second, with nuclear proliferation and our nation's emergence as the world's leading debtor others.

So the global table at which your administration will take a seat is not rectangular. It is round. No nation or body of nations will sit at its head. No doubt the clout wielded by individual countries gathered around that table varies - not all are equal. But none will dominate - not China, not Russia, not us, not anyone. Acknowledging this reality implies a radically different approach to statecraft, one that should emphasize collaboration rather than coercion, setting an example rather than issuing threats and inflicting punishment.

Yes, the U.S. must always stand ready to defend its vital interests from attack. But much as those interests are changing, so too should the means employed to protect them.